This week’s assignment in COM 597 is to propose ways AT&T can create service envy in the mobile applications developer space via its website http://developer.att.com/developer/.
According to Bill Moggridge, in his book Designing Interactions, one of the major challenges of being a service designer is, “to enable people to express who they are through the use of services instead of through ownership of things” (pg. 423). Creating service envy is important for businesses because those who are happy with a service are more likely to stick around in the long run than those who are only attached to specific products.
I don’t know any mobile application developers, but I can speculate as to what a mobile application developer would view as superior service in interacting with a mobile carrier website such as AT&T’s devCentral. If I was a mobile application developer, I would want to work with a well-organized, informative and straightforward website. I would not want to interact with Verizon’s mobile application developer website (http://phones.verizonwireless.com/motorola/droid/), which is visually stimulating, but takes time and patience to navigate (meaning less productivity and money). Rather, I would prefer to interact with Apple’s iPhone developer website (http://developer.apple.com/), which is simple, stylish and full of pertinent and helpful information.
From the perspective of my untrained eye, it appears devCentral is doing a pretty good job of creating service envy in the mobile application developer space when compared to the competition: it is clean, informative, intuitive and orderly. The website clearly communicates why developing mobile applications for AT&T is profitable and how to become a mobile application developer. The website also provides news on latest trends and devises and a forum for developers to interact with one other. That being said, perhaps devCentral can boost its service envy in the developer community through putting even more effort into connecting mobile application developers via its website. If devCentral can position itself as the go to place for developers to ask their peers for assistance and feedback, it could become the premier source of up-to-date information for the mobile application developer community. This would ultimately save AT&T customer service and marketing dollars by allowing developers to generate educational information and feedback on devCentral as opposed to relying solely on staff.
